I cut AN from my list for EtW. it has been fine. but i also main 2 grims and no other IMS other than petals so AN is kind of sub par.Originally Posted by Uranium
I don't know if this is relevant for you, but with this sideboard you fold to leyline of sanctity (with the exception of EtW, but against a field with terminus, batterskulls,EE's or even elephant grass this shouldn't be a viable option). I would try to squeeze in 2-3 chain of vapors...
Just my 2 cents....
Edit: Why don't you try something like this to work with:
(Explanation: My Maindeck plays 8 Discard-Spells and three Probes and I found it a rare scenario to wish for an additional discard-spell)
//Sideboard
SB: 1 Tendrils of Agony
SB: 1 Grim Tutor
SB: 1 Empty the Warrens
SB: 1 Ill-Gotten Gains
SB: 3 Abrupt Decay
SB: 1 Tropical Island
SB: 3 Grafdigger's Cage /Surgical /Extirpate
SB: 3 Chain of Vapor
SB: 1 Pyroclasm/Infest/Meltdown/Reverent Silence (Meta-Slot)
As you mentioned you cutted the singleton C-Mox from your MD for an additional Island, but why not replace it with the Trop to make room for another card of your wish in your SB? (I know, Trop is not exactly the Land you want to see in your opening seven... I'm just brainstorming here)
Last edited by DarkJester; 12-27-2012 at 06:00 PM.
I've done extensive testing on MTGO in 2man queues (money on the line). Here are the results:
I sorted the games to see how my FoW winrates were.. not pretty - 40% win rate. 4 losses to CBtop (expected).
The series went thus:
Match Winrate
58.6%
Game Winrate
53.5%
Games Played
71
Matches Played
29
Code:Games Wins Losses Sneak Show 2 0 BUG tempo 2 0 4c Deathrite 2 1 Esperblade 2 1 Cbtop 0 2 UWr Cbtop 0 2 UWb Cbtop 1 2 EsperBlade 1 2 BUG tempo 0 2 UWr Cbtop 0 2 ANT 2 1 Enchantress 2 1 Zombies 2 0 Dredge 2 0 ANT 2 0 Elves 2 0 Affinity 2 1 Enchantress 2 0 Junk 2 1 Zombies 2 1 Affinity 2 0 Junk 2 1 NO Elves 2 1 Affinity 0 2 Zombies 1 2 ANT 0 2 ANT 0 2 ANT 1 2 Junk 0 2
West side
Find me on MTGO as Koby or rukcus -- @MTGKoby on Twitter
* Maverick is dead. Long live Maverick!
My Legacy stream
My MTG Blog - Work in progress
I'm glad to see people posting statistics like this. Data is always useful, but not the most important thing.
- How did you feel about each matchup? Specifically, did you feel like you really had to struggle to win, despite the raw numbers looking good?
- What list did you play? 16-cantrip / Grim / Wish / other?
- Do you have any thoughts about individual card/sidboard choices?
I'm surprised you didn't see any Thresh at all. That's something I'm worried about for GP Denver.
Sorry if I missed a previous post but what's your list?
Empty the Warrens has been testing very well for me over the last few days. It is especially good against some of our bad tempo matchups like RUG Delver. It forces your opponent to board in some bad cards like Engineered Plague or Rough // Tumble if you beat them with it game 1. The interaction with Cabal Therapy is actually quite relevant, and I have won several games by flashing back Therapy in testing. Overall the card gives some nice options to the deck.
i'm just talking without testing, but i think that ant is a little slower than tes to use etw in the maindeck
It's not built very well to Empty on turn 1 (although it obviously happens occasionally), but turn 2 Empty is easy and is very strong against certain opponents. It helps to have Empty in your deck against Daze/Pierce Tempo opponents when they keep durdly hands.
In non-wish Grim Tutor versions w/ Empty in the board, against Daze decks, do you just swap Empty and Tendrils? Or do you take something out and run both?
The only decks that you're reliably racing with ETW over Ad Naus maindeck are some RUG draws and some BUG draws...
Against BUG, Ad Naus is probably just better -- you can't reliably use the Graveyard, they have a lot of discard, they're 1-2 turns slower than RUG, and they don't run burn (so you can safely Ad Naus down to 1, and you'll usually have time to get 3-4 lands out and still have a fairly healthy life total). Not to mention, they run a lot of blockers and have life gain, so ETW isn't getting there that often.
Against RUG, ETW is probably better...so you have to decide if the slightly better RUG matchup is worth making all of the random matchups where Ad Naus is pretty good (any deck that doesn't really aggressively attack your life total, any discard deck, any other combo deck).
I think with this deck, everyone learns pretty quickly that Ad Naus with 0 floating isn't really what you want to be doing...so they over correct and just never cast it. Especially post board, I tend to cast Ad Naus a fair amount (probably 30%ish of games), as it's a very high percentage kill if you can float 2 mana, and it makes it so we don't really care that much about GY hate.
I cut a Grim Tutor for a ETW, I don't think you should cut Tendrils from the main pretty much ever.In non-wish Grim Tutor versions w/ Empty in the board, against Daze decks, do you just swap Empty and Tendrils? Or do you take something out and run both?
This is what I thought, I always get a little nervous not having access to Tendrils, but I just wanted to make sure that wasn't just me.
I've tested EtW against both tempo decks and, IMO, it only worths against RUG, for some reasons:
-They usually put more pressure on board, if they start with Delver maybe it's the same, but is not if BUG starts with Shaman or Thoughtseize.
-They have lightning bolt (Main reason).
-Mostly every RUG has stifle, in BUG decks is not as common. Stifle can also put kind of pressure on you since you'll have some trouble developing your manabase.
-BUG has more ways to control your PIF plan (shaman+GY hate post board).
Even against RUG I side out Ad nauseam (which I almost never use unless I have no other choice or I'm in a pretty good shape which is not common at all), goblins are not my main plan, they're usually like an emergency button for hard situations. We must also be careful with them, because they often bring EE for Etw or blowing up our 0cc Artifacts (this can happen mostly against BUG when you lay LED in order to protect it from discard).
I must say I found BUG a much more harder matchup than RUG, not the control build, but the tempo one is like a nightmare, free counters+wasteland+stifle+delver+discard+shaman...
I'm playing the UB version, only splashing red for PIF+Etw and green for SB cards.
I have actually found Tempo BUG to be a little easier than tempo RUG - it's usually very obvious when they're holding up stifle, since they run a lot of sorcery speed disruption, and I generally think it's a little easier to play around Thoughtseizes than spell pieces and snares, and BUG runs a lot more dead cards against us than RUG (decay, often other removal).I've tested EtW against both tempo decks and, IMO, it only worths against RUG, for some reasons:
-They usually put more pressure on board, if they start with Delver maybe it's the same, but is not if BUG starts with Shaman or Thoughtseize.
-They have lightning bolt (Main reason).
-Mostly every RUG has stifle, in BUG decks is not as common. Stifle can also put kind of pressure on you since you'll have some trouble developing your manabase.
-BUG has more ways to control your PIF plan (shaman+GY hate post board).
Even against RUG I side out Ad nauseam (which I almost never use unless I have no other choice or I'm in a pretty good shape which is not common at all), goblins are not my main plan, they're usually like an emergency button for hard situations. We must also be careful with them, because they often bring EE for Etw or blowing up our 0cc Artifacts (this can happen mostly against BUG when you lay LED in order to protect it from discard).
I must say I found BUG a much more harder matchup than RUG, not the control build, but the tempo one is like a nightmare, free counters+wasteland+stifle+delver+discard+shaman...
I'm playing the UB version, only splashing red for PIF+Etw and green for SB cards.
Part of the reason I don't mind the BUG matchup is there are no surprises - you can tell when you're dead by just counting the board, so you know exactly when to try and combo. Against RUG they have burn, sometimes a mongoose gets thresh out of nowhere, etc, so sometimes we just die without even testing their hand.
I also haven't really been impressed by shaman when I've seen it in play - there were a few awkward matches where I forgot it's abilities and accidentally unthresh a C-Rit or accidentally die to Ad Naus, but now that I'm used to playing around it, it's very slow, and it's still pretty trivial for us to be thresholded on turn 3, and it presents essentially no clock. It's better than mongoose from RUG, but not by that much.
If people are actually playing well with Shaman, it is a lot better than you are giving it credit for. It really messes with the Past in Flames plan if the opponent knows what they're doing.
Is anyone from the thread going to scg Columbus? I
I'd like to meet other ant players
Shaman doesn't seem like much of an issue. All of their tricks are on board, just don't walk into them. Hymn with Daze/FoW to back it up does seem like a problem though.
Does it not SEEM like an issue, or has it not been an issue in your playtesting against good players? In my 20+ hours of testing against a skilled BUG pilot, it is sometimes a frustrating card to play against. Notice I said "skilled" because Shaman literally does nothing if your opponent doesn't realize that it can be an important card in the matchup.
Sometimes you don't care about it, but other times it forces you to find an additional tutor for Past in Flames loop while you are being killed and never obtaining threshold. When you win with Past in Flames, there is often a specific set of cards that you need to loop to reach maximum mana, maximum storm, and to find the tendrils. The Shaman can really mess with this. Now it's obviously not a card that you "walk into"... But not all hate has to win on the spot...
There's not much point in talking about Shaman, cause there isn't much you can do about it other than power through. I will say that Shaman gives another reason to have Empty the Warrens in your deck, because it makes Past in Flames a little more unreliable in a matchup where it would usually be very good.
I think Shaman is a very good reason to not have EtW in your deck if you're cutting Ad Naus for it. When PiF is less reliable, Ad Nauseam is pretty good, especially since most of the Tempo BUG draws are quite slow, and Ad Naus is usually live on turn 4+. When I run EtW in my SB, I don't even board it in against BUG, as we usually don't have enough cards in hand against them to make a winning number of goblins.
I really agree. If you're on the Burning Wish build, EtW plan is perfectly fine against BUG, but with the infernal+grim build you have to cut Ad nauseam for it, and I've found Ad Nauseam plan pretty good against BUG as I said before.
By the way, what do you guys think about xantid swarm plan?, now I'm still running 4 on my SB, but I see some people who are cutting them for Thoughtseize (talking about Infernal+grim MD build of course).
i am down to 3 swarm, the 4th one is kind of redundant and you only really want the 4th for fish and show and tell.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
